Are Students Who Go Far Away to College More Likely to Study Abroad?

Pins mark the locations of Goucher College students who were studying abroad in 2005, when the college announced that all students had to study abroad.Credit Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Katie Anne Scott was the only one of her friends to leave California for college. None of them understood her desire to leave, with so many terrific options for college in her home state. And yet to Ms. Scott, from San Diego, that was just the point. Staying in California meant she would not experience anything new.

After enrolling at Emory University in Atlanta and accommodating to the South, where the car culture and the demographics were radically different, Ms. Scott found herself applying similar logic to her options for study abroad.

“I might not have gone to Ghana if Emory hadn’t geared me for it,” Ms. Scott said during a Skype interview earlier this year from her adopted African home. “I just have one suitcase here, and that’s fine. But most of my friends here don’t have that experience, so it’s definitely been easier for me. Ultimately, it’s still just a plane ride.”

Ms. Scott is just the type of student of interest among advisers for studying abroad who are trying to figure out why sophomores and juniors choose to study where they do. While these advisers need to know how best to organize their annual budgets and which programs to finance or cut, many colleges are also busy strategizing how to effectively motivate students not just to go abroad, but also to choose developing countries — with emerging markets and less familiar cultures — as their destinations.

The correlation between going far from home for college and studying abroad in more challenging countries has not been studied closely, experts acknowledge, but more general indications of comfort level often prove determinative.
A 2009 study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling indicates that the education level, income and travel experience of parents are the easiest ways to determine how far away a student is willing to go for college. Seventy-two percent of Americans go to college in their home state; only 16 percent end up enrolling in a school that is neither in their home state nor in a bordering state.

New research indicates that those same factors drive decisions to study abroad.

“It’s the conceivability factor: what seems conceivable for students,” said Nick Gozik, the director of the office of international programs at Boston College. “What does your family say? Here, there are socioeconomic differences. For students who come from less privileged backgrounds, getting to university is already a hurdle. Getting abroad feels like extra.”

Mr. Gozik began studying these trends at Duke University; he has since coordinated an assessment working group between Boston College and Duke to continue his research. Duke cites a host of variables that make it difficult to measure the importance of a student’s distance from home, ranging from household income to where in the world one’s college friends have chosen to congregate that particular semester.

“In national statistics as well as statistics here at Duke, students have chosen, on the whole, not to go to more challenging places,” said Margaret Riley, the director of the global education office for undergraduates at Duke, where just under half of all students study abroad. The top home state of Duke students is California.

The same ease of mobility that first allowed students to enroll in colleges throughout the country has also made studying abroad increasingly feasible: the decline in airfare costs since airline deregulation in the 1970s, growing college endowments that now extend financial aid to studying abroad, and the Internet, which allows students to keep in touch with their families and discover schools and programs far and wide.

“There’s a requirement that these students are going to have to be more independent,” said Bruce Poch, a former dean of admissions of Pomona College who is now a college counselor at the Chadwick School in California. “And there’s still an adventuresomeness to students who choose that path. There are just a lot of kids who don’t want to go to school with the same people they went to high school with, and they do that against a lot of pressure.”

At Grinnell College, where 65 percent of juniors chose to study abroad last year, the majority of students come from outside of Iowa. Grinnell’s study abroad office sees a willingness from those students to travel to more challenging places more consistently than is the national norm.

“What makes a student choose a safe location, versus one that’s more challenging, is an important question,” said Richard Bright, the director of off-campus study at Grinnell. “But we do know that most of our students are taking a flight here. So plenty of students are coming from distant parts of the country, and then they really go all over the world.”

Among the 1 percent of students enrolled at American colleges and universities who study abroad each year, three-quarters are Caucasian and two-thirds are female.

“I’m not sure who has the greater challenge: the student who has not been out of the four counties around their college who goes to Europe for the summer, or the student who comes to university from 2,000 miles away and then goes to Thailand,” said Joseph Brockington, the director for the center for international programs at Kalamazoo College. “But we know from research in the education abroad area that if Mom and Dad can’t imagine themselves in the location, they’re unlikely to let their kids go.”

“It’s not about whether they’ll have toilets that flush,” Mr. Brockington added. “It’s about whether their kids will be taken care of. So we try hard to dispel the rumors, but if Mom’s against it, it’s not going to happen.”

Grace Hancock of Atlanta, in a switch of sorts with Ms. Scott, is now a freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Her thinking was similar to Ms. Scott’s on both her college choice and her options for studying abroad.

“The places I’ve been thinking about are definitely more exotic, because I want something further away that’s new and different,” Ms. Hancock said. She is considering New Zealand or Tanzania, where she plans to continue her studies in environmental science. “I’m already so far away, I think I can handle it just fine. It’s not as scary to go a bit farther.”

I think given the extraordinary opportunity to study abroad, very few students would turn it down. The bottom line is always: MONEY. So many kids want to move far away to go to college, and they don’t fear that exeprience at all. They are very independent, but if you don’t have the funds to fly back and forth for holidays, or to afford to study in another country, you are at a disadvantage. With the ever increasing student debt loans, perhaps this country should stop sending billions in aid to countries that don’t appreciate our help, and start investing in our own citizens by giving that money to students who clearly love learning and would jump at the chance to go overseas, explore other cultures and be better equipped and more competitive in the job market. The rich always have the advantage and through no fault of their own, the less fortunate lose out. No matter how many jobs you hold to pay tuition, the added burden of a semester or summer abroad breaks not only your back but your bank.

I feel that your argument disregards any student that goes to a large public university, seeing as not one was even mentioned. As an honors student at the University of Georgia, I have had classes with many residents of the state of Georgia but at the same time there are many students not from Georgia or its bordering states and I know other large public university are the same. UGA is also consistently ranked very high for our study abroad opportunities. Personally I have been able to participate in a program in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I have multiple friends go to programs in countries such as Ghana, Peru, Tanzania and others all across the globe on every continent including Antarctica.

As Zach said, way to disregard all public universities. Another factor that should be mentioned is some schools require studying abroad. I go to Western Michigan University and we are essentially across the street from Kalamazoo College. It is a requirement for all but a handful of majors to study abroad there; and of course if one can afford $45,000 a year tuition, studying abroad should not be an issue. In Michigan some of the most active study abroad programs are my university, Michigan State and University of Michigan. (where the student bodies are 10 times that of some of these private institutions).

With respect to Nick Gozik’s comment about the conceivability factor, I think we need to be careful about how we consider less privileged backgrounds. While certainly conceivability is related to sociocultural disparities, modern research (for example Mark Salisbury’s paper “Going Global”) trumps the old world thinking that demographics are the leading indicators for intent to study abroad.

In fact the truth is closer to what Joseph Brockington adds to Michael’s piece, that the level of cultural capital fostered at home is more closely correlated with the choice to go abroad.

I work at a large study abroad program provider and try to steep myself in this sort of stuff. In my experience the most successful framework to view the connection considers 1) sociocultural capital, 2) campus context and 3) curricular context. When the stars align on these three factors (and let’s say even for underprivileged or unconventional demographics) even the most challenged students make it abroad. We’ve seen a lot of success with community colleges, historically black institutions and see a lot of potential with first-year students for these reasons.

I’d challenge all our peers in the study abroad community to look beyond demographics and consider that with the right investments in student sociocultural capital you can get a lot of results with underrepresented groups.

Money is certainly a major limiting factor at every stage — it keeps kids at the local college, or in-state, or prevents travel abroad. And prior experience I suspect is the other huge factor: If you’ve lived away at summer camp, going to a residential college is easier; if a student from Utica has spent time in New York City, London probably doesn’t seem so daunting.
The important benefits of “study abroad” in any sense come from the challenge any particular student faces at “the next level,” whatever it is for that student. For some, it might mean a field trip to the local museum; for others, living in a Cambodian village.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with attending college in your home state. In fact it often makes a lot of financial sense. I attended a state school and got in-state tuition and some financial aid (easier to get for in-state students at my university). Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into a similarly ranked public (top 5) as an out-of-state applicant. Also I would have paid 3x as much for my education and would have likely graduated with student loan debt instead of being debt free.

You say, “College is supposed to expand your mind. Why handicap it living at, or too close to, home?” There are a variety of reasons why people choose to go to college in their home state. For some people, it is indeed financial. Other students, particularly those with disabilities, benefit from attending college that is geographically close to where they grew up. Due to my ADHD and anxiety; I struggle with transitions in general, and adjusting to freshman year in college is one of the biggest transitions ever. Simply living away from home was a bigger deal for me than it was for my more “typical” peers; and I liked the security of knowing I could go home whenever I wanted. That is why I attended a college half an hour away from my parents’ house.
Once I got over the initial transition; I was able to thrive at my college, did very well academically, made many wonderful friends, and was challenged to grow in many ways.
I had the opportunity to study abroad, but chose not to.
After hearing the stories about other student’s experiences abroad, I determined that four months in Europe sounded fun but not worth the stress of going through two major transitions in such a short time (the first when adjusting to a new country, and the second when returning to America).
Plus, I felt that I would get overwhelmed in a foreign country on my own; particularly one where I would not have the protection of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I chose instead to stay at my college and concentrate on strengthening the friendships and attachments I had made on campus. I told myself that Europe would still be there after I graduated, but I only had one chance to be a college student.
Today, part of me regrets not taking advantage of the opportunity to study abroad (especially since I still haven’t made it to Europe) but I know I wasn’t ready at the time and I believe I made the right decision. So keep in mind that all students have different needs and that the “right” decision for you might not necessarily be the “right” decision for someone else. There’s no shame in attending a college close to home.